


smb:\\movie-guardians

by alec



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies), Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: DreamWorks!AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-20
Updated: 2015-07-20
Packaged: 2018-04-10 06:30:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4380824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alec/pseuds/alec
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Today was the day, however. He was now four gigabytes large, which was a far better measure of development than age since some of the models that were old were still really shitty (background_viking_baby.3ds was intact from the first movie, but was only a few vertices better than a malformed pyramid). And it was so fortunate that now he had flashy colour on him (on most of his body, at least).</p><p>Because he had promised himself that once he reached four gigabytes, he was going to venture out into the Network Core.</p>
            </blockquote>





	smb:\\movie-guardians

Four gigabytes. Hiccup had reached four gigabytes today.

The texture team had sent over the textures for his clothing, and Hiccup's modeler had spent the entire day painstakingly matching vertices to coordinates. For all of the man's work, however, there were still areas of his pants that were untextured — which said nothing for his entirely clay-coloured face. While his own model had begun from the model used in the previous movie, he needed completely new textures. The existing textures would be too stretched to render nicely, the mesh for his outfit was entirely different, and he was now supposed to have facial hair — the facial hair had taken four days to get right. It only showed up in the renders right now, and it felt strange wearing it.

Hiccup rolled his shoulders, moving his left arm to scratch at a spot where the outfit was chafing him on the right. With his new model came a more fully articulated skeleton, and it felt so amazing to be able to stretch in every dimension he could imagine. He turned his neck and felt satisfied, even without the cracking sound effect.

Today was the day, however. He was now four gigabytes large, which was a far better measure of development than age since _some_ of the models that were old were still really shitty (background_viking_baby.3ds was intact from the first movie, but was only a few vertices better than a malformed pyramid). And it was so fortunate that now he had flashy colour on him (on most of his body, at least).

Because he had promised himself that once he reached four gigabytes, he was going to venture out into the Network Core.

There were so many characters here in his movie's shared drive — so appropriately named smb:\\\movie-dragons-2. At the start, there had been new directories appearing every day, ten new models every week. Months into development now, there was less of an influx of new models. But the number here was mindboggling. The first movie had only had a limited cast. Compared to this, there was — well, there was an army, which he guessed was appropriate, having read the script and all. He enjoyed Drago the best, because his actual personality matched nothing to the script, and watching him try to struggle to find voiceover clips to use that matched his surprisingly gentle nature was hilarious.

All of his friends were here, and they were looking just as amazing as he was. DreamWorks was putting so much effort into this movie, and the detail that was being paid to all of them was astounding. And the switch to this new program? It felt like being passed through a waterfall only to find yourself in a new and exciting world. Which was actually something Hiccup had gotten to do; there was a waterfall that rendered in almost real time. Technology truly had become breathtaking in the past four years.

And there was no way to describe how beautiful Toothless was. For the first three months of development, Hiccup wasn't able to leave his file; there had been too much still under development. But as soon as he'd been able to step outside it, his first thought had been for his dragon. And seeing Toothless that first time was— it was nothing short of _perfect_. They had raced at each other, exploring their new meshes, Hiccup rubbing his hands along the now-pronounced ridges on the dragon's head, and Toothless' head nosing at the prosthetic — checking at first that it was even there. Compared to what he had worn for the first movie, his new prosthetic almost looked like an intact leg.

But for all of that, there was curiousity in Hiccup. This was his movie, but this wasn't the only movie. In the far distance, he could see the massive tether from his public share to the network; it was a thick line of brightness in the vast space of darkness, and — really — it was intimidating. It had been too intimidating for Hiccup when he was modelled for the very first time.

But not for this Hiccup. The Hiccup from this movie was supposed to be all about exploration and seeing the world and fucking bitches. That last part wasn't actually in the script; one of the authors had just left a comment on the sidebar to pass along to a coworker friend.

But Hiccup _was_ actually curious.

He was going to do this tonight.

This was his night.

There was nothing holding him back.

He could do this.

Psyching himself up for the adventure was doing little to settle his stomach as he approached the bright white edges of his public share. The walls of the drive domed up at the top, and all around him were the reflections of circuitry and the electricity that was powering all of them. They flowed into blocks — regions of memory which stored the data on each drive or sat empty, waiting to be allocated. These blocks, taking the form of giant cubes, reached halfway to the ceiling, arranged on a perfect grid that spanned from wall to wall and extended seemingly without end into the distance. And there was only one break in the wall: the ethernet cable that ran the infinite expanse between _here_ and _there_. Hiccup had stood at the entrance to the tunnel of light before. Many, many nights.

Hiccup closed his eyes tight, moving his right leg. His foot came into contact with the floor of the tunnel.

And just like that this night was unlike any other night before it.

When Hiccup would look back on this moment in the future — even as near in the future as ten milliseconds from then — he would see this moment as being a terribly stupid one. He had seen the ethernet in use before; he'd seen files come and go, merely lines of light passing in and out of the tunnel at speeds he couldn't even fathom. And yet somehow, he had imagined that he would be able to walk this at his own pace, build up his own courage.

Arms flailing madly, Hiccup didn't hit the floor before all of his data was streamlined and he was shooting down the cable at a rate he could quantify but not comprehend. If his very body were not a stream of particles, he would have needed to close his eyes to bar out the sight of the world around him; it was too much to take in.

And then like that, it was done and Hiccup's leg was corporeal again, touching the floor as though he had crossed through a doorway and not through dimensions of what felt like time and space and something else he never wanted to experience again. His head was reeling and he had to double over. Or at least he thought he had doubled over — when he opened eyes he wasn't aware had closed, his hands were on a floor he wasn't aware he was touching. It took minutes for him to pull himself upwards and steady himself on his legs. His eyes were open but unseeing, and he had to shake himself to make them work again.

His lips parted as he was able to see. There would be no way that he could put into words for the others what he saw before him, even if his voice clips were magnitudes larger than what it was.

The Network Core was a spire of light and electricity like his public share, but which extended upwards with no end and downwards with no bottom. Movement was happening all around him as streams of data without any true form at all raced by along the walls. From the ethernet to his public share, a platform of translucent light extended to the wall across, with five other platforms branching off to six ethernet ports along the circular wall. Above him and below him, as far as his eyes would let him see, the same hexagonal configuration continued, each rotated slightly so that it looked as though it were a staircase.

The sheer magnitude was overwhelming. Terabytes of data branched off through more ports than Hiccup would ever be able to explore, even if he had all of time to do (which, he supposed, he did). He wasn't sure where to begin, and the unexpected infinite possibilities led to a crippling inability to decide. Hiccup watched as the traffic of data flew wildly about the edges navigating the circuitry in jagged pathways, veering off in sharp angles until they disappeared through a port, whisked along towards their destination. He stood wide-eyed, turning his head to take in the scene.

It wasn't as though he had an intended destination. All of the many nights he had told himself he would go to the Network Core, he'd never actually thought of what he would do there. He had inklings of plans — thoughts of what he wanted to see. But all of those were scattered from his mind at the overwhelming array of _actual_ opportunities. And so Hiccup did the only thing he could think to do: he took a step over the edge of the platform and walked off.

His descent was controlled, but it was much quicker than it was on his public share. He supposed that made sense; there would be more computational power, more latent speed here than there would be anywhere else. Hiccup landed on the platform just below his own.

It seemed that there wasn't any particular planning or order to the layout of the Core. As he surveyed the names of each of the drives attached on this ring, his eyes roamed from //network-software to //accounting to //backup-007. A while back, the Network Core had been shifted to the cloud, a change which had not affected any of them in their own drives personally, but which now meant that Hiccup was able to access servers beyond the local office. He arched his eyebrow as he dropped to the platform beneath; there was far more redundancy here than was necessary.

By the time Hiccup had reached the seventh platform down from his own, his enthusiasm was pretty low. From the subnets that he had seen, there was nothing here for him. Nothing looked interesting or even worth exploring. Personal documents and financial audits and presentation materials — there was nothing here for him. He hesitated, seating himself on the edge of his current platform and letting his legs dangle over the edge as he let out a muted sigh.

It was right when he had readied himself for the defeated return trip, hopes dashed, that he saw it.

smb:\\\movie-guardians

Hiccup threw himself off the edge of the platform, gliding to the centre of the eighth ring from his own. He approached the port with a mixture of trepidation and glee. This was the first movie he had seen other than his own in the Core, and more than that, it was a foreign land for Hiccup. Isolated to their own public share, there was no mention of other movies. He didn't know what to expect, or what would be waiting for him on the other side. But he couldn't now return home without seeing it for himself; there was no way he would be able to just leave as though he hadn't seen it. And so he reached out his hand gently and let his fingers move through the port.

The sensation of being serialised and running down the ethernet was less unpleasant this time, now that he knew what was waiting for him. Hiccup tried to focus on nothing but keeping his data uncorrupted; the less he saw of the ethernet itself, the easier it was to accept himself and stave off existentialism. He deserealised with more grace than he had the last time, and he was able to confine the queasiness to just his stomach.

Hiccup didn't know where he was, but the place looked... dead. When How to Train Your Dragon had rendered and gone through video editing and then through post processing, the activity in his old public share had lessened. Fewer models came out from their files, choosing instead hibernation for resurfacing in the sequel.

But this... there really _was_ no other way to put it. The drive was dead. Devoid. Empty. There was no activity, no faces, no sounds in the far off distance or files left open. It sent shivers up Hiccup's spine, seeing the walls of the public share still alive and moving, but the the area not even populated by ghost files.

This must be a movie without a future.

This is what it looked like to die and have no sequel.

And this would happen to Hiccup and the others. Not now, but even a trilogy had to end. And then after that, there would be nothing. They would all remain in stasis, their job complete and their time passed.

A rush of sickness ran over Hiccup and he fell forward, clasping his hand to his mouth as he dry-heaved into his hand. Waves of nausea flooded through him, and he wished he had done anything but come in here. He couldn't accept this truth, and now he couldn't just return knowing what awaited them in the future.

Hiccup was broken. He curled up, allowing himself to fall on his side as he tucked his legs to his chest and hugged them. He didn't want to stay here, but there was no point in leaving; the damage was already done and he wouldn't be able to escape the memory of this place.

He had been laying there on the floor for six minutes, forty six seconds, and one hundred and thirty seven milliseconds when something happened.

In the distance, there was a flicker of movement. It was no more than a couple of pixels, but the dark brown contrasted so vividly with the bright white that it stuck out. Hiccup pulled himself up, morbid curiosity rushing through him. His instincts told him to go away, to not see something that would only make this worse; but his curiosity told him to go forward, to see what this was.

And then the pixels were gone.

"Hey!" Hiccup called out, dashing towards the block the pixels had disappeared behind. He rounded the corner, catching more brown pixels disappearing three directories ahead of him. "Don't!"

Hiccup was fast, but it seemed that the pixels ahead of him were faster still. He could tell that he was losing them — no, that he _would_ lose them.

"Stop!" he yelled as loud as he could. "I'm right here bud. Come back to me!"

The brown pixels disappeared entirely, and with them went the last of Hiccup's energy. He placed his hand on the edge of the nearest block he had rounded and bent over, trying to calm himself.

"Can— can you... can you see me?" a deep voice asked in the distance, and Hiccup looked up. The floor was bare and the area was empty.

"Yes," Hiccup replied, unsatisfied with any of the sound clips he had available to himself. None of them gave off the right mix of attempted comfort and slightly mild fear at the same time.

"He can see us?" the same voice asked incredulously. The voice was coming from above the directories, and Hiccup looked up, steeper than he had seen anyone climb.

There, perched on top of the block diagonal from him, was a boy who looked about Hiccup's intended age. He had white hair and his skin seemed to blend in with the white radiating from the block. Were it not for the blue clothing that the boy was wearing and the brown staff that poked up above the crouching figure, Hiccup might almost have missed him altogether. As it was, more than half of his body was still hidden.

"Who are you?" Hiccup asked, wrinkling his nose at how accusative his voice sounded. He knew that it would scare away the other figure, and so was surprised to see him still in place when Hiccup reopened his eyes.

"I've been around for a long time," the boy said, leaning forward slightly. "My name is Jack Frost."

Hiccup scrunched his nose for a second, searching. "My name's Hiccup. Great name, I know. But, it's not the worst." The boy's staff fell forward but remained in his hand, crook hanging over the edge of the block as though he were intended to stave something off. It took little guesswork to figure out that that "something" was Hiccup. "What happened here?" Hiccup asked.

"Darkness..." the boy replied, and Hiccup wasn't sure if it was cryptic because the boy couldn't find something better to elaborate with, or because he wouldn't even if he could.

"Come here, you," Hiccup said, motioning with his hands. He adopted the most welcoming face he could, trying to coax the boy down from his perch. His character had befriended a dragon; by comparison, this should be nothing.

But the other boy's eyes opened wide, and he pulled back quickly, standing up to his full height and towering over Hiccup from atop the block. Hiccup had a moment to take in the figure and then it was gone, disappeared in a swift motion that left Hiccup clueless and lost, only staring at an empty spot atop an empty block in a dead drive.

* * *

Hiccup didn't leave his own public share for days after that. There wasn't the time, as everyone was busy showing off their textures as they began to arrive in force; and with changes to the script the day after Hiccup returned, all of the characters clamoured to read through, hoping that they appeared cooler now or that they had more lines to choose from when talking. Hiccup felt more sorry for the characters who had one line than for the characters who had none; at least those with none didn't have the taste of something good only to have it be dangled over them.

But even here, the boy was on Hiccup's mind constantly. Everything that Hiccup had been able to take in in that one moment was a canvas frozen in his mind that he allowed himself to pour over. He had no idea who the boy was, or even who he could be. The public share was too large and too differently structured for Hiccup to have been able to find any information about what the movie was. There was just a boy in a blue hoodie, somewhere in an infinite maze of data. But that boy _looked_ like Hiccup. Other than Astrid and the twins (and now his mother), everyone that he had grown up with was tall and muscular and hairy — even the women. Despite the script saying otherwise, Hiccup had never felt out of place at home for how he looked.

But he had never seen someone else... like him. And he felt a strange desire to see more of the boy. He was foreign and new and beautiful; even in the brief moments Hiccup had been able to see Jack's face, he could see the hours of labour and detail that had gone in to making him. He was stick thin, his limbs somewhat elongated — Jack was _more_ of a fishbone than Hiccup had been in his first movie. And Hiccup wanted to know more.

No. He _needed_ to know more.

In the commotion and buzz of activity going on for the hundreds of vikings and dragons (including two impossibly massive, _completely_ untextured dragons), it was easy for a scrawny boy to slip away through the port that nobody ever watched. He took the platforms in the Network Core two at a time, reaching the entrance to the unknown movie in front of him. He took a deep breath and set his shoulders, an act which was utterly pointless when he lost any bodily form a second later.

The drive was just as empty as it had been three days prior. Just as still. Just as barren. It might have been a lack of voice clips, but Hiccup thought now that he knew what Jack had meant when he said darkness had happened here. It felt as though there were nothing waiting above the ceiling; as though nobody were there any longer. He wondered how long it had been since this drive had been accessed.

"He won't hurt you!" Hiccup called out. It was just something they had to accept; rarely did pronouns or tenses match up in any meaningful way. Speaking offered little more than abstractly conveyed concepts. Hiccup hoped he was conveying the right one as he walked slowly — hopefully, unthreateningly — down the centre of the drive. Let Jack come to him on his own terms.

The drive was massive. Hiccup had barely had a chance to explore it — he'd only just stepped through the first gigabyte of the four terabyte drive — but there was so much work in here. Most of what he walked past was useless to him. One block had a bunch of one second audio clips that didn't actually have any audio; another had compressed backups and a code script. There was one directory puzzlingly named "KEEP OUT JIM!" When he peeked inside, there was just an 8 byte text file that said FUCK OFF. There was probably a story behind that.

But one of the directories had some textures in them. Texture files were hard to understand without their models, but just looking at it... Hiccup had seen raw textures as they had been sent over by the artists for his new movie. They were impressive and he was really proud of what it would look like when it was done. But _this_.. He'd never seen anything like this before. Even without the model, he could see this was an iron lantern. Even without the shaders; even without the lighting; even without reflection or post processing or even without a _model_ — this was gorgeous and vivid and _real_. Hiccup took a step back, blinking his eyes slowly, trying to take in the world he was walking into.

His movement was halted, something prodding into the narrow of his back with pressure, a blunt but thin line. Hiccup tried to turn to see what it was, but it pushed harder in response.

Hiccup had expected him, had been _looking_ for him; but he had also expected a... warmer welcome.

"What's going on," the deep voice asked. The words were spoken with more calm and care than the shepherds hook pressed against his back evidenced, but that was how it was; actions always spoke louder than the words chosen for them.

"Alright. Easy, bud," Hiccup responded calmly, raising his hands above his head in what he hoped would be a sign of peace. The hook was pushed emphatically into his back as though to reaffirm who was in control here, but there was no further objection. "I'm not going to let anything happen to you, I promise."

"How do I know that?" Jack asked, but the pressure lessen slightly. Hiccup wanted to turn around, but he decided against it. He wanted to let Jack continue to be the one in control.

"Just let me show you." Hiccup wasn't sure if that would be good enough. But after a moment, the pressure against his back was gone. Slowly, Hiccup turned around, and he could see that Jack was still apprehensive and his grip on the staff was tight, only barely pulled away from Hiccup's body.

Hiccup was thin, but there was still flesh to his own face, there was still a softness that could be poked and pinched. But Jack was thin and lithe, and everything about Jack was angular. His limbs were lean and firm, and with a look of hostility on his face, he looked fierce and forceful. Hiccup could contort his face for years, but he would never be able to achieve what Jack in this one instant was wearing. And yet there wasn't an evilness to him. There was distrust and hostility and perhaps even a little fear.

But what a beautiful thing was Jack. The first thing that Hiccup saw was the face, and the details and the textures there were enough to make his mouth open. There were pores and the hint of veins and freckles that existed but didn't need to be prominent like Hiccup's in order to be seen. Hiccup looked into eyes that were a shade of blue he had never seen before, drawn with a level of depth he'd never imagined. There was a paleness to his skin and a darkness around his eyes that was new for Hiccup, and Hiccup could only think of the concept sketches of the Bewilderbeast to reference the shade of white-yet-silver hair that fell just above the boy's eyes.

"Oh, wow." Even if Hiccup had all the time, he wouldn't be able to take in enough of this boy.

Sensing Hiccup's lack of fight, the staff slowly lowered as Jack's body began to relax, his shoulders lowering. Then Jack brought himself up to full height, and Hiccup was surprised to find that he was only a little bit shorter than Hiccup himself.

At first, Hiccup's immobilisation was soothing; but then his adoration must have become too much, and Jack coughed somewhat uncomfortably.

Hiccup shook his head, focusing on to the shades of blue staring back at him, and if Hiccup had the textures mapped to him, he would probably be blushing. "Hey," Hiccup said, trying to recover his composure. He supposed he had done too well in putting the other boy at ease.

"Oh hey, Phil," Jack said, rolling his eyes after a moment in the same disgust that Hiccup had seen all too often around his drive; the look of someone who had said _almost_ the right thing for what they meant, but just slightly — aggravatingly — off. Hiccup grinned and laughed, and he took the moment to marvel at how dynamic Jack's face was. Nobody he had ever seen had the ability to express so much character and such a wide range of emotion with just their face alone, and Hiccup wanted to see all of the faces Jack could make, no matter how long it took him. Then Jack's lips were moving again, silent, and his fingers made simple, deliberate movements.

There wasn't enough dialogue for any character that there could ever be viable communication aloud. To exist, to survive, and more importantly to live together, it relied on a mixture of reading one's lips — which were free and unbound, so very unlike their voices — and of hand signs, which formed a simple language that existed to complement their mute mouths. However, _'Okay, good. He can sign'_ gave way quickly to _'I don't understand his signing.'_

Though the practise was the same, it seemed that what they spoke in smb:\\\movie-dragons-2 wasn't what they spoke here. Hiccup tried his hardest to read Jack's lips since he was at a loss, but it was too late by the time that he realised this; Jack was done talking and was looking at Hiccup expectantly. And Jack had no idea that Hiccup had no idea what he had been asked.

"What?" he asked, cocking his head to the side and ducking sheepishly. Jack stared back at him more wary now than before, a look of distrust already seeping back into his eyes. The exotic boy took a step back. Hastily, Hiccup broke down, signing out that he needed Jack to repeat what he had asked. As Hiccup signed and mouthed, Jack's eyes opened and it looked as though he reached the same realisation that Hiccup had. The boy stood upright again, hesitation giving way to what appeared to be curiosity, and Hiccup repeated his question, much slower this time and after gesturing to his lips before he did. It took Jack a moment to process, but then he nodded in acknowledgement. Hiccup paid close attention to Jack's thin lips as the boy asked his question again.

He was asking where Hiccup had come from. Hiccup nodded his head quickly, before pointing back the way he had walked. It was already far off in the distance, Hiccup having made quite a journey into the drive, but it would be impossible to mistake what he meant. Yet Hiccup didn't need a lifetime of reading lips; from Jack's reaction, it was clear to him that this was the most obvious statement he could have made, and that this was in no way an answer.

Hiccup tried to think critically about how to answer the question. To Jack, it was obvious that he came from elsewhere in the network. It would probably be just as obvious that Hiccup came from another movie. Hiccup had no idea what Jack's knowledge would be — whether he would know of the other movies — but that was all he had to work with.

Oh god, this would be so embarrassing.

Hiccup threw his arms up in the air, mimicking a bear though he was merely going for ferocious. "We have... OUR DRAGONS!" he bellowed, voice echoing through the drive and startling Jack who recoiled slightly. Embarrassed, Hiccup dropped down, making himself slightly smaller, and held up his hand, indicating with two fingers that this was a sequel. Jack looked at him blankly for a moment, slight confusion on his face. Then it appeared as though lights had gone off in Jack's head, and suddenly he was smiling and energetic and speaking way faster than Hiccup had prepared himself for.

Except these were familiar words.

' _How to Train Your Dragon!_ '

' _Hiccup!_ '

' _Berk!_ '

And then it was Hiccup's turn to look at Jack in confusion. "Uh, should I... should I know you?"

There was a brief second where a crestfallen look crossed Jack's face, but then he was shaking his head. When he looked up, his features were happy and smiling. Jack's hands moved quickly before he remembered the language barrier, and the motions became slower and more deliberate after that.

From what Hiccup could tell, Jack was saying that he had seen Hiccup's movie. That he had visited their old drive and had peeked in at a Berk that was suspended in time; empty, but not dark and alone like here. Then there was rapid motion and pantomimes of explosions and aerial battles, and Hiccup smiled as the boy in front of him lit alive with childlike glee. Hiccup bit his lower lip and smiled, overcome with Jack's cuteness. When Jack finally stopped moving, he looked up at Hiccup with admiration.

Fear. Anger. Sadness. Distrust. Glee. Admiration. This boy could show all of them.

Hiccup had never seen anybody this beautiful.

With Jack calming down from his excitement, Hiccup signed out slowly. He wanted to know more about Jack. He didn't even know what the name of the movie Jack was from, or what it was about. Jack was a mystery that Hiccup wanted to unravel. What was the world Jack was made for like? What story shaped him? Who was this boy meant to be, and who was he really?

But as Hiccup asked, a darkness fell over Jack. His eyes grew darker and his expression fell until the only emotion that he showed was a look of far-off sadness. There came no response from Jack, and Hiccup panicked. He signed that he didn't mean to insult Jack; that all he wanted to know was what movie _he_ should watch, and what story to read and if Jack would show him rather than let him learn by himself. Hiccup wasn't sure how much Jack was able to understand, but Hiccup hoped that the truly important things were getting through. But by the time that Hiccup finished, Jack's mood hadn't improved, instead only growing worse. Hiccup raised an arm, trying to comfort the boy.

Jack took a step back, retreating from the motion. The two stared at each other in a moment that had grown inexplicably tense. And then Jack was running.

Hiccup was determined not to let him escape this time. If he was gone now, he wouldn't see Jack ever again; the look in the boy's eyes had said as much. If Hiccup was ever going to see Jack smile again, he needed to catch him now.

Powered by that thought, Hiccup gained a burst of speed as they chased around the corner of a block. He reached out for the boy, and he caught what he had been aiming for: the end of the boy's staff. Latching on with everything that he had, Hiccup dug his heels into the floor (a task made none the easier due to his partial lack of a heel), pulling them both to a halt.

This staff seemed to mean something to Jack; he wouldn't leave without it. But Hiccup expected Jack to pull at the staff hard, or to fight him. Hiccup braced to defend himself from a kick. He wasn't prepared for the boy turning, tears welling up in his eyes, threatening to roll down his cheeks. The shock tore through Hiccup and he felt his grip loosen on the staff, but Jack didn't pull away. He just stood where he had been caught, and Hiccup watched a tear line his cheek as he swallowed.

Hiccup moved closer, latching on to the boy's shoulder before he had a chance to run. He pulled himself closer to Jack, reaching up with his free hand to smudge away the tear. The look of pain in the boy's eyes was so vivid and so real that Hiccup hated whatever movie had made Jack need this face. He wrapped both arms around Jack, pulling the shaking boy against him, holding on to him as the boy shook. It was longer than Hiccup expected that the staff hit the floor and he felt both arms embrace his back.

They stayed like this for a long time, even after Jack's body had stopped moving. Hiccup didn't know Jack; in fact, other than his name and his face, he knew nothing about the boy. But he felt certain that this was what Jack needed. He needed someone else.

How long had he been alone?

Jack's head had turned, resting against Hiccup's shoulder, tucked as it was now. When Hiccup pulled his head back to inspect him, Jack picked himself up, staring back at Hiccup. It was difficult, looking into those blues eyes, to remember what he was going to say, but the words finally came back to him. In slow motion, so that Jack would understand each word, Hiccup told him that everything was alright; that he didn't need to tell Hiccup anything that he didn't want to.

A look of relief washed over Jack's countenance, and his face relaxed. Hiccup could feel the arms across his back shift, no longer clinging to him but resting where they were. Jack was at peace, and Hiccup decided that this was his favourite expression that Jack could make.

As Hiccup stared at the face such a short distance from him, Jack blinked and a blush spread across the boy's pale face. All at once, Jack detached himself from a startled Hiccup, backing away and putting space between the two of them. The boy's eyes were wide, though whether it was a fear returned or an apology Hiccup wasn't sure. He was looking at Hiccup from across the divide he had made between them, and Hiccup knew that he needed to say something — anything.

"Relax. It's okay... it's okay..." Hiccup said soothingly. He bent down to pick up the staff, breaking eye contact with Jack for only a moment. When he offered the staff out to the boy, Jack took it after a moment of trepidation. There was confused hesitation on his face as he looked from the staff up to Hiccup. "Don't worry, bud," Hiccup repeated, and he gave the most sincere smile that he had ever felt his face make.

"Thanks," the other boy said, turning his back to Hiccup and running down the path he had gone before. But Hiccup didn't chase him; it felt different this time. And Hiccup was right. After a few bounds, Jack turned around to face Hiccup again, and slowly — with great care — he signed out only three words, asking Hiccup to come back again. Then Jack pulled his hood over his head and continued to run, Hiccup watching until the boy disappeared between two blocks on the left.

Hiccup leaned against the block they had been standing next to, and let out a deep sigh, allowing himself to sink to a sitting position with his back to the block. He felt exhausted in more than one way.

But he also felt good in every possible way.

* * *

"Where have _you_ been?"

"Astrid!" Hiccup called out in surprise. True, his arrival back via ethernet wasn't necessarily stealthy, but if nobody were paying it much attention he could have escaped easily.

Astrid was leaning against the edge of the drive with no great care, looking at a Hiccup frozen midstep, waiting for both the metaphorical and literal other shoe to drop. In general, Astrid enjoyed watching Hiccup squirm. It was a wonderful game to play, trying to get him into increasingly uncomfortable situations and watching him try to escape. Though that was easily a sideline sport; Hiccup had a knack for putting himself in these kinds of spots even without her help. Astrid just liked pushing the hand of fate a little. It helped her feel satisfaction with a job well done.

"What are you doing here?" Hiccup stuttered out. Astrid cocked an eyebrow as her only response to the diversion.

"What are you doing?" she asked, standing upright but leaving her arms crossed across her chest.

"Nothing to be afraid of," Hiccup replied, taking a single step toward the centre of activity for their drive during the night. He was hoping the she would take the prompt and at least move away from the port, but there was no luck for that.

She wasn't antagonistic about it, or at least not spitefully so. Boiling it down, there was perhaps a level of sibling care. The two had grown up together, watching each other be molded and shaped and textured and rigged. From the very beginning, they were put together in scenes by the animators even when they were little more than crude resemblances of their final forms. Of everyone that existed in Hiccup's world, only Toothless had the same bond with Hiccup as Astrid had. Whatever their scripted roles were, the reality of it was that they three were siblings. And so there was perhaps some level of concern in Astrid's questions.

But mostly, Hiccup knew, was a stubbornness that was so uniquely Astrid's that she should know all things that she wanted to know about. And Hiccup wanted to avoid just that, because he didn't want others knowing that he was sneaking away from the drive. There weren't de jure rules against leaving, but there were de facto ones. Hiccup didn't want to find out how the others would take his abandonment of the people who existed to put Hiccup in the spotlight; there would be anger and hurt and crushed feelings and nothing good from it. But Hiccup also didn't want Astrid to leave or to follow him. He couldn't risk Jack being overexposed to people when he only just now met others. The boy was already on edge and would only trust Hiccup. Or at least, that's what a small sliver of Hiccup wanted to believe. Hiccup knew these were convenient excuses covering the deeper, actual truth — that Hiccup wanted Jack just to himself — but he didn't want to accept this.

"I normally don't care what other people do," she began — an outright lie that she liked to fall back on during her very thorough, very personal investigations. "But you're acting weird. Well, _weirder_. I want to know what's going on."

Hiccup dragged his fingers down his face. He began signing to Astrid that she needed to trust him and that there was nothing wrong, before he realised he was still signing slowly for Jack. Astrid continued to stare at him without a response, and it pulled the admission from Hiccup, who never had the backbone to be able to weather through Astrid's investigations. He said that yes, there was something out there, something important — to Hiccup, at least. But he needed this. He needed her to trust him that he needed this for himself. At least for now, he finished, though he wasn't sure if he was telling that to Astrid or to himself. Hiccup had no plan and no ideas about what was going to happen; only that Jack had asked him to come back, and Hiccup couldn't wait to do so. I need this for myself, he said. He needed to be able to share it with her rather than have it be taken. He needed it on his own time.

Astrid's eyebrow finally descended, and with it her tough and stoney demeanour. She signed that that was good enough, that that was all she had wanted to hear, and that nobody else had seen him disappear. Then came the chiding reminder that if he was going to slink off to places he shouldn't be, he should at least do a better job of trying to go undetected. She smiled, walking past a somewhat dumbfounded Hiccup, making her way towards the centre of the drive.

She had just passed out of arm's reach of Hiccup when she stopped, cocking her head back and looked at Hiccup over her shoulder. "Just... promise me it won't go wrong," she said with a grin that was half mocking, half teasing and only subtly sincere. She winked, and then continued walking.

Hiccup watched his sister walking away from him and decided that this had been quite enough activity for one day, and he took the circuitous (but private) route to his personal directory.

* * *

_'I. Want. Your. Teeth.'_ That makes no sense; maybe it's _'I like your teeth'_. My teeth are really shitty, especially compared to his. No, what— _oh! 'I like your smile!'_

Hiccup mouthed the words to Jack, who nodded his head emphatically. Hiccup clenched the air in success, making a mental note that swiping your index finger across your open-mouthed smile simply meant 'smile' and not the thing it looked like you were pointing at.

(Hiccup also felt elation that Jack liked his smile, and he was going to hold on to that closely for a very long time.)

It was Hiccup's turn now and he cocked his head to the side, trying to think of something to say. His mind was completely blank of creative things to say, so he signed out _'He said goodbye'_ , wondering if Jack had been able to detect how to use past tense.

The two had met every night for the past week. Hiccup was nervous to ask anything about Jack's movie, and it felt as though him doing anything in Jack's drive would risk the potential for the boy to run away again. He had let Jack lead him around, but without much purpose. They had only passed a few blocks — Hiccup managing to quell his curiosity to peek inside and see what wonders they held — before Jack had turned to Hiccup, shrugging his shoulders and signing quickly. The two had tried to communicate, but it took them minutes to be able to fully understand each other. That was when Jack had sat himself down on the floor in one fluid motion, crossing his legs. He looked at Hiccup to join him, and they began signing very slowly.

After a week of learning each other's dialects, it was becoming much easier to understand each other. The two boys were now able to have basic conversations with one another. Most of the time, it was Hiccup signing in Jack's motions — Hiccup was quicker to learn than Jack was, though the white-haired boy had made considerable progress as well. But, Hiccup was coming to believe, it was because Jack's dialect was more natural and made a great deal more sense than Hiccup's did. He was determined to learn Jack's way of speaking quickly and efficiently; he wanted to be able to talk to this boy, and ask him all manner of things. He wanted to see Jack speak.

Jack was so enthusiastic when he replied to Hiccup that Hiccup felt bad having to correct him. He had gotten the words right, but he had used present tense. A light blush touched the boy's face and his ears burned red, all the more visible in contrast against Jack's pale skin. Hiccup quickly motioned that it was okay — learning the grammar of the languages was so much more difficult than learning the words. Then Jack responded by pointing out that Hiccup was doing just fine with it, and Hiccup didn't know how to respond to that. He wasn't _wrong_ , but this wasn't as black and white as that made it out to seem. Perhaps it was time to end the lessons. Hiccup waved his hands, signalling that they should stop. Silent hands sat idle for moments, and Hiccup caught the poorly-hidden look of relief on Jack's face.

It was really cute.

Slight nervousness crept over Hiccup as he broke the silence, asking Jack what he did normally. He wanted to know about the other boy so badly, but he also didn't want to scare Jack away; each question he asked, he could find some (perhaps minuscule) connection to the forbidden topic of Jack's movie. It was hard to divorce the two — after all, they existed for each other. That held true for all characters, but Hiccup expected this most of all for Jack; the boy was too perfectly made, too detailed to be a side star, much less a background character.

It looked however like this was a perfectly acceptable question to ask. Jack cocked his head back, pondering the question for a moment before responding. He had explored the Network Core the same as Hiccup had done. He sought out the other movies in particular — there were many to choose from, ones that span back ten, fifteen years even. The next part was difficult to understand, but it looked as though there were movies which were flat and to see them was amazing. Jack said that he had been to most drives on the Network, but he hadn't explored them all in depth; he would continue to go to the same ones.

A twinge of jealousy stole over Hiccup as he asked (somewhat bitterly) who out there Jack had met in the time he had travelled the Network. It had been naive to assume that Hiccup was the only person in Jack's life. And so he felt elation when Jack indicated that there was nobody. Elation followed by guilty pity; it was a selfish want, and Jack had to have been alone for all these years in order to fulfil it.

But that made no sense. Hiccup asked in confusion how Jack could go to all of the other movies, and yet meet nobody. Jack's response was succinct: he hadn't wanted to be seen.

"What? Why?!" Hiccup asked out loud, his own voice surprising him after such a long time without speaking. He had not heard his own voice in two days. Nor, for that matter, any voice at all other than brief ones in the distance. But Jack motioned that he didn't want to talk about it — one of the most important signs of Jack's that Hiccup had learned. Curiosity ate at Hiccup but he dropped the conversation; it was the only thing he could do.

With the dialogue ended prematurely, the two sat in an awkward silence, neither sure what to say to the other. And so Hiccup asked the most obvious question, the futile one: what did Jack want to do? Jack's jolt of reaction, then, surprised Hiccup. The white-haired boy tried to play it off as though nothing had happened, but it had been clear — he had had a thought for what to do, and he wasn't going to share it without some pushing.

Hiccup asked what Jack had just thought of, a question Jack hastily replied that he hadn't thought of anything. Hiccup repeated the question, Jack repeating the answer, continuing until Hiccup asked if Jack was embarrassed.

Yes, the boy signed. He was.

That was an adorable thought for Hiccup, and he needed to know now what Jack was too embarrassed to share and he redoubled his efforts. He'd been through enough times personally where Astrid's constant meddling had broken him down, and he was (triumphantly) watching the same happening to Jack. The moment that Jack signed that it was too personal was when Hiccup offered a trade: Jack show him this, and Hiccup would tell Jack a personal secret of his own.

Jack worried at his bottom lip in thought, painful choice visibly tearing at him. His eyes shut tightly as his nose wrinkled, and Hiccup knew he had won. Jack begged for Hiccup to not laugh, and Hiccup replied earnestly that he wouldn't.

Jack stood up, retrieving his staff from where it leaned against the block. He offered a hand out to Hiccup, who gladly took it, savouring the feel of the fingertips against his skin. He led the way, turning quickly and navigating them through the labyrinth of his drive. Hiccup had felt good about where he had been before. It wasn't the same place every night, but they were always close together; where Jack was secretive and Hiccup didn't want to push him, all the directories remained closed and there was nothing unique about any particular spot. Hiccup needed to make sure that he didn't anger Jack, because he was treacherously deep within the maze and it would take him ages to get out unaided.

After a long walk, Jack stopped in front of a particular directory on the edge of a block, turning to look at Hiccup. Hiccup glanced at the metadata. This directory was newer than the other ones around it and, curiously, was created and owned by the filesystem, not any of the DreamWorks employees. It had no registered name, and it was black — marked to be hidden from regular display. If Jack weren't showing Hiccup where it was, he never would have found it. Jack looked at Hiccup with worry in his eyes, and there was no doubting that he was thinking about changing his mind. Hiccup gave him as reassuring a smile as he could, putting his hand on the boy's shoulder for comfort. It looked to be all that Jack needed, and when Hiccup signed that he would follow him, Jack nodded his head and the pair entered the directory.

Hiccup hadn't been sure what to expect from the directory, and finding a chain of Photoshop files — each also without any indicative filename — was surprising, if not more than a bit mysterious. They weren't close enough to make out any details, but already Jack was looking at Hiccup with a bit of fear. Hiccup couldn't help himself as curiosity won out. Jack had brought him here, and he felt assurance that he was given permission. He stepped forward, moving closer to the first file, watching as it came into focus. It came as a huge surprise to see a picture of a dragon before him. The sketch was entirely digital lineart, and compared with what Hiccup saw on a daily basis, this was rudimentary artwork. The lines were hesitant and not all in the right places, but Hiccup could make out the details of the dragon in front of him.

The body of the dragon vaguely resembled that of a Monstrous Nightmare, though the body was much smaller; it looked only large enough to support one rider, and Hiccup doubted if a riding saddle would be able to fit on this dragon. The tail was thick and long, curving like a snake as it wound around in coils, easily doubling the length of the dragon. The limbs were sleek with sharp claws on the underside of the dragon's forearms. A splattering of ovals (of something; Hiccup wasn't sure) formed patterns along the long neck which blended seamlessly into a narrow muzzle, the whole length curved and looking not unlike a bird's. A majestic mane of webbing flowed down the back of the neck, meeting with large wings of the same type that extended along the dragon's back.

Hiccup blinked. He had never seen a dragon like this before; not even in the discarded concept art for his movies. He moved to the second picture, which was of the same dragon, but looking now as though he had heard something in the distance. Hiccup had seen that pose often enough from Toothless, and it was interesting how a dragon without ears handled the same pose. It did surprisingly well, using emotion played through the eyes and the tilt of the head rather than through the angle of the ears. From this viewpoint, Hiccup could see that the ovals along the dragon's neck looked as though they were small gem-like orbs that stuck out a little bit. They were too small and too erratic to be scales, but that was the closest thing that he could think of.

The third and the fourth pictures were just the same — the same dragon, in various poses; the first of the dragon in flight, and the second of him with his head completely turned, his long neck rotated along its length. Hiccup didn't recognise the art style, though each subsequent picture seemed to be slightly better than the previous one. But it was the lifelike poses and the consistent and minute attention to the dragon's details that made up for the imperfect style.

And then Hiccup saw the fifth picture and everything made sense. It was a picture of Jack, staff in one hand and the other arm extended high, holding a nondescript chunk of meat. The dragon was below him, hind quarters in the air and front pressed to the ground, the long neck extended toward the meat with a look of happiness and excitement in its eyes. From the angle that the picture was drawn from, Hiccup couldn't get a good look at Jack's face, but he looked as though he were smiling.

Hiccup felt Jack's approach from behind. He turned to face the other boy, whose face was a bright shade of red and his head ducked down low in embarrassment. Hiccup signed, asking Jack if this was his dragon. The boy merely nodded his head, shoulders raising even higher in embarrassment. It felt like taking a risk, but Hiccup told Jack that he hadn't known that his movie had dragons as well.

It didn't, Jack corrected. Hiccup cocked his head to the side in confusion, but the confession came without prompting. Jack had seen Hiccup's movie, and they had all looked so happy, and the dragons had been so cool and cute and friendly, that Jack had wanted his own friend. He'd thought about it for days and weeks before finally creating this hidden directory and trying his hardest.

Hiccup had spent his entire existence around dragons and this was the absolute cutest thing that he had ever seen.

He turned back to look at the picture. There were at least a dozen more pictures — some with Jack, some without — each with the dragon in it. Jack had drawn it as an avid hunter, at least two or three pictures of the dragon chasing something small or carrying a Terrible Terror by the tail in its mouth. Another was of the dragon sleeping, with limbs snaked around a thick branch and its head resting gently on top of the limb of the tree. The one that caught Hiccup's attention the most, however, was the dragon in flight. It was a majestic creature, and the pattern and shape of the wings were their most beautiful when the wings were fully expanded — the features that Jack had drawn in all of the pictures had been faithfully rendered here. But what had caught his attention in the picture was Jack. The dragon was flying, but it was flying without a rider. Instead, Jack's arms were outstretched, the staff pointed outwards, the boy flying next to his dragon. The two were looking at each other and, once more, Jack's face was hidden from view; but judging by the happiness on the dragon with, Hiccup knew that a happy Jack had drawn this picture.

Jack had followed Hiccup around slowly as he walked, fidgeting terribly as he watched Hiccup critique his artwork. When Hiccup turned towards him again, it made the white-haired boy jump suddenly under the attention. Hiccup asked why he wasn't riding his dragon, to which Jack replied that he didn't need to. In his movie, Jack was able to fly by himself, so he didn't need to ride his dragon; they would be able to fly together, which Jack thought would be really cool. Hiccup took another look back at the picture of the two of them flying before he asked what the dragon's name was. Jack spelled it out letter by letter, that her name was Snowfall. He'd really liked Meatlug and Fishlegs and thought he would like a female dragon as well.

Hiccup could only stare at Jack, completely lost for words. There were so many questions he wanted to ask but he couldn't grasp at any of them. Jack seemed to wither under Hiccup's gaze, visibly growing more and more unnerved with each passing moment. Just when Hiccup thought that Jack would collapse, the boy asked what Hiccup thought. He didn't need to pause. Hiccup responded immediately with lavish praise, from Snowfall's unique design to the improvement in the art to the attention to detail and how well-planned Jack's designs were that each picture revealed something new that was still in the original picture. Jack preened under every compliment and by the time that Hiccup was nearing the end of the list, Jack's uncontrolled smile was huge. If there ever been an end to that list, Hiccup wouldn't know, because the boy's smile drove the remainder of the words from his head. Jack thanked him over and over again, but Hiccup didn't need his words to know what he was saying.

Hiccup looked back at the drawings, trying to take in everything, to memorise it, to know Snowfall as well as Jack apparently knew Toothless. The dragon was only flat — and there were only the handful of pictures that Jack had drawn. But there was so much personality that Jack had managed to work into the pictures that, by the time he was done, Hiccup could imagine where Snowfall would fit in alongside the other dragons on Berk.

His confidence returned, Jack stood next to Hiccup, looking at the pictures. At first, Hiccup could see that Jack's eyes were trying to see the pictures as a newcomer would see them; but as he glanced over at his subtly, his face relaxed and he could see himself looking at an old friend.

They were sitting on the floor of the directory in front of the first picture of Snowfall, neither having said anything since their earlier exchange. All around them were the pictures of the dragon and of Jack's happiness, and it radiated around Hiccup and everything felt so.. personal. Hiccup's drive was his home — Berk was his home — it was where he grew up. But it was a place made for him. Jack had made a home for himself entirely by himself, and Hiccup could feel how much more real the happiness was here.

Jack turned his head towards Hiccup and told him that it was Hiccup's turn. Hiccup looked back at Jack in confusion, trying to figure out what he meant, before remembering that all of this had started because he'd promised to share something personal if Jack shared this with him. With the pictures now rotating around them slowly, closely, intimately, Hiccup decided that this had been a wonderful, perfect trade-off. And now it was his turn to hold up the end of the bargain. He looked over at Jack and simply signed out to him that he personally thought Jack was very cute when he was embarrassed. This admission caught the boy by surprise, and the boy became all flustered movements and creeping blush and nervousness.

And it only served to further prove what Hiccup had said to be true.

* * *

Hiccup had absolutely no idea where they were.

He had no idea how far down in the Network Core they were; they had been in near-perpetual free-fall for minutes now, and yet it seemed to continue far beyond where Hiccup could see. Hiccup wasn't sure if they were approaching the older end of the network core, or the newer; either way, the platforms were becoming increasingly incomplete. Dead port openings where drives had been removed or were waiting to be attached became a more common sight, and the platforms at each level were missing prongs where there were no ports. Increasingly the boys were falling for two, three platforms at a time.

Jack was leading the way. Jack had been leading the way since they had left his drive. He had taken Hiccup's hand — an experience Hiccup was continuing to smile over as he fell behind the boy — and had pulled him through the ethernet. Hiccup had barely deserialised when Jack was signing to follow him, springing off the platform. It was like watching the tiny dragons flying about; he would alight on the edge of one platform, gripping with his toes (from the looks of it) and rotating like a hinge downward, springing off the platform in one fluid motion. Hiccup was nowhere near as skilled, and Jack would come to a halt every four or five platforms, waiting for Hiccup to catch up. Hiccup felt it would be a better idea were they to travel together, but Jack seemed so _in his element_ as he moved that Hiccup doubted it would be possible for him to travel any other way. It looked so natural, so graceful.

Every time Jack would turn as Hiccup descended, he would wave off Hiccup's question with 'not yet' or 'follow me' or just a simple nod towards the edge. And so Hiccup was descending towards destination unknown, trusting only in his guide.

He was placing considerable trust in Jack as he continued to find himself in more and more remote, unknown locations every night.

Hiccup watched as Jack — two platforms below where he was — dove towards the third platform headlong, tucking midair and landing on the ledge with a roll, kneeling in front of an ethernet port. A second later, Hiccup landed on the floor behind Jack, who stood up and faced him. Hiccup didn't have a chance to ask his usual question, Jack pre-emptively cutting him off indicating that they were here.

Where _here_ was another movie drive: smb://movie-wild-animals. Hiccup blinked at the name without recognition — it meant nothing to him — but Jack was giddy and excited when he looked back to him. "We're gonna have a little fun instead," he insisted, grabbing Hiccup by the hand and pulling him towards the port.

Even from the ethernet port, Hiccup could hear the clamour of voices, excited yelling and loud noises — the sound of partying, and.. what sounded like.. actually, Hiccup had no idea what the sound was. He turned to Jack, confusion on his face, not prepared for what he saw. The white-haired figure was practically hopping, excited smile on his face, arms braced and fists clenched as though he were holding back. Feeling Hiccup's stare, he looked up at Hiccup, eyes practically begging Hiccup for permission to go. Hiccup felt colour rise to his face, caught off guard by the adorable display of eagerness, and he nodded his head rapidly. He was willing to do anything Jack asked if Jack looked like this.

Jack jumped off with a bound, racing towards the edge of the blocks, limbs flailing wildly, disappearing through one of the pathways, Hiccup trailing behind him at a slow pace and trying not to feel hurt that Jack was abandoning him for some others. But then the white-haired head stuck itself outside the blocks, looking for him, and Hiccup enthusiastically picked up his pace.

They were only a few blocks from the sounds of the party when Jack turned to face him, sudden hesitation written across his face. Hiccup cocked his head slightly to the side as a blush crept across Jack's face. Hiccup asked what was wrong, and the blush only deepened. Jack signed back that there was a certain... way that he came here. Continued confusion contorted Hiccup's face as he looked at the boy. It wasn't just Hiccup's imagination that Jack looked apologetic. The white-haired boy took a deep breath and twisted his wrist. And then suddenly the white-haired boy was gone.

Hiccup blinked rapidly, shock registering on his face. In Jack's place was, well, he was still Jack. The boy peered up at him with dark, chocolate eyes peeking out from beneath brown bangs that had only milliseconds ago been stark white. The boy's skin was deeper, more— alive. He looked like he might pass for a viking on Berk, albeit the skinniness. Then again, who was Hiccup to talk about that. Jack's whole appearance had taken on shades of brown and tan and dark, earthy tones. His head was ducked down sheepishly beneath his shoulders, as though he were afraid what Hiccup would say.

'Jack could texture swap' was all that ran through Hiccup's mind. There were two unique versions of the same Jack — both as equally attractive, both as equally adorable. But now that Hiccup could see Jack with skin colour — with so much natural colour — it made Hiccup all the more curious about the boy's movie. He hadn't thought about it before, but seeing Jack so coloured and alived made him wonder if— well, if the other Jack that he had known wasn't as much so.

Hiccup could texture swap, he supposed. He was technically still the model from his first movie, and he still had the texture from that movie with him. He figured it probably wasn't the best idea, though, since the majority of his old facial textures were now mapped to various regions of his back and shoulder pads.

The now-brown haired boy was looking up at Hiccup, clearly waiting for some response.

"Wow," was all Hiccup could think to say, but there was awe in his voice, and Jack smiled under all of the compliments unspoken. He let out a deep breath of relief, grinning at Hiccup with his perfect teeth, and Hiccup could feel emotions deep inside him that were rapidly bubbling to the surface. They told him that he wanted to take a step closer, towards the other boy. He was about to, when—

"Right there! You see?"

Hiccup took a step back in shock and more than a little fear. His eyes were huge as he surveyed the beast in front of him.

It was tall, but it was tall unlike any dragon or animal he had ever seen. Its body was low to the floor, no higher up than a Deadly Nadder. But the height came from the beast's neck, which rose two, maybe three times the height of the rest of his body. A long muzzle bent down, forcing its way in between the two boys, turning his head towards Jack.

"Hey! Woah!" Jack said, looking a little startled at the sudden invasion but otherwise completely at ease.

"It's getting late," the beast said, nodding his head first towards Jack, then towards the source of the sounds. "Usually I don't look in, but this time I was walkin' past."

It seemed then that the creature noticed Hiccup, craning its long, narrow head towards him. "Hey, the bozos have the people." Jack made a face at the beast, swatting at his neck with the back of his hand.

This wasn't a dragon. Hiccup had no idea _what_ this thing was, but its head was getting closer. He didn't _think_ it was going to eat him — didn't have very large of a mouth, actually — but Berk was a place where the teeth in a beast's mouth was usually the least of your worries. He did the only thing he could think of, other than running away (or running to Jack and clinging behind him). Tentatively, he stuck his hand out, the palm facing the creature. It didn't look like a dragon, but maybe he'd be able to win its trust all the same.

Instead, the creature pulled his head back with a mix of confusion, disbelief, and a hint of horror. "Oh, no. It's unsanitary."

Hiccup just stood there, shuffling his feet, entirely out of ideas on what to do with something like _this_.

The beast pulled his head towards Jack, leaning in and whispering loudly: "They are so cute from a reasonable distance." Jack grinned and swat at the beast's neck again.

The long neck stretched up again, nodding towards the sounds of excitement, before trotting off towards it. Hiccup's eyes were still wide, but as he turned towards Jack, the other boy's familiar (well, _sort of_ familiar) face gradually calmed him down. Jack laughed a little, trying to hide it behind his hand; after gaining composure again, he signed out that Melman wasn't any danger — was actually very far from it.

The sounds of partying picked up, and Jack turned his head towards them, grabbing Hiccup's hand in his and pulling him along through the last few blocks, around the corner, and straight through into one of the blocks on the right.

There was a lot to take in all at once. Hiccup's first thought was that Melman was hardly the strangest creature he'd ever seen. In fact, every beast in front of him seemed to be more foreign than the one before it. There was no commonality between any of them, or any of them and humans — Hiccup thought, at least. It seemed so difficult to tell because they _looked_ like creatures but only acted like them partially. He was absolutely certain two of them were standing on their hind legs and dancing like Stoick and Valka did back at home.

The second thought was — he'd never seen a _party_ like this before. This was more than a simple moot or festival on Berk. This was, well— this was _wild_. It was insane and it was intense and it was foreign and maybe just a little intoxicating with the atmosphere of it all. Strange music was playing all around him, the beats of the drums alongside instruments he had never heard and still other sounds he didn't know how to process; a voice was singing incomprehensible words. Hiccup had no idea what he was supposed to be moving, or even what 'it' was.

He barely had time to process any of it when everything came to a grinding halt, the music cutting out mid-sentence. Some of the animals looked confused, but a few of them had already turned their heads towards Hiccup and Jack.

A strange, grey creature — tiny, probably not up to Hiccup's waist — stood on top of a large pole brown pole that greatly resembled a tree. It probably was, if the weird leaves strapped to the creature's head were any indication. "SHH!" It called out across the now-quieting crowd. "WHO IS MAKING THAT NOISE? Oh, it's me again. Be quiet everyone. Including me."

All of the creatures were now staring at Hiccup, who side-stepped closer to Jack (and maybe slightly behind him).

"King Julian, what are they?" another tiny grey creature asked, and Hiccup now took in the fact that there were dozens upon dozens of them scattered throughout the party. Hiccup couldn't see perfectly from where he stood, but Jack signed something to the _King Julian_.

King Julian jumped down from his perch, aided in the landing by two of what must be his loyal subjects. He began moving towards Hiccup, who decided that, while he was way _far_ out of his element, to trust Jack who seemed to be in more control of the situation than Hiccup was. As long as he could continue clinging to Jack, he decided he'd be able to face any situation.

"Welcome, giant pansies! Please feel free to bask in my glow!" the King announced, and suddenly Hiccup was more indignant than anything else. How had Jack introduced him that this tiny rodent was calling him a pansy.

With that, an even tinier (how small did they make them?) creature — brown this time, with eyes that took up a fourth of its body — stumbled forward, falling on its face once before picking itself up. _Ah, there it was. The cute factor for this movie._ It giggled slightly, and Hiccup had to admit, that giggle _was_ really cute. "I like them I like them I like them first before I even met them I liked them I liked them right away you all hate them compared to how much I like them," followed by another giggle.

Okay, Hiccup breathed. These were pretty evidently not any threat to him, however strange and heretofore unseen they were. He took a step forward, signing his _own_ introduction (not trusting Jack to have done it properly). When he finished, there was still silence, and he wondered if he had overdone it with the personal story or his impression of what was going on. The thought occurred to him that maybe they didn't sign the same language that Jack did. Then—

"Welcome to Madagascar! Our little corner of heaven," King Julien said, raising his arms and smiling. And with that, the music picked up and suddenly all of the animals were dancing and partying once again, pulling Hiccup into the fray. Jack followed after him with a bounce, clearly excited at the turn of events.

From the other side of the party, a giant creature — the closest to a dragon that Hiccup could see — with a giant ring of fur around its neck jumped up atop a giant woman of wood. "WE WILL LIGHT THE BEACON OF LIBERTY!" he said, throwing down the fire and setting the statue ablaze in an instant.

Hiccup wasn't sure what happened from then on. It felt like a blur of motions and events, and he had actually been so swept up in the rush of the party that he wasn't sure how long it had taken for him to be dancing with a giant, fat grey creature he later learned was named Gloria. At some point during the rush of events, Melman had grabbed two sticks from the fire, twirling them around in a dazzling display of flame and coordination, and Hiccup found himself cheering just as loud as the crowd around him, surprised at how quickly he had fallen in as one of them. It was simply the sheer energy and atmosphere of the party that consumed anything that came to it.

About the time that King Julien cried out across the crowd — "NOW WHO WOULD LIKE A COOKIE?" (met with savage cries and cheering) — Hiccup realised that he hadn't seen Jack for a few minutes. He pulled himself away from the crowd, struggling to the edge and scanning across the party from the tips of his toes. One of the grey subjects of King Julien looked at him curiously, and Hiccup signed that he was looking for Jack. The creature merely pointed at the edge of the block, indicating that Jack had left. Hiccup felt heartbroken as he followed the direction that the creature had pointed.

It was... surprisingly difficult to call out for Jack. Hiccup had never been in this position before, where he'd been forced to actually call out for the other boy. They were always together, or always expecting one another, or Jack would find him before Hiccup got too far. The best Hiccup could do was call out "Bud!" a lot and hope that Jack would just understand it was meant for him.

The sounds of the party were at his back, still in full swing, and Hiccup wondered if perhaps they never stopped partying. One endless party, every millisecond of every minute of every hour of eternity. That sounded more like a curse than a good time, even if they seemed happy.

Sweeping a perimeter of the blocks yielded no boy nor any clues as to where he should be looking. Hiccup decided that he had no choice but to start peering inside blocks and directories, seeing if Jack might have gone into one of them. Peering into others' blocks was private — not in the literal sense; in the literal, all of the directories on the public share were, by nature, public — but some people held them as their own personal space away from everybody else. Something in the back of his mind told Hiccup that these were perhaps the least likely people—er, animals (he thinks?) to care about privacy, but that didn't alleviate the scandalous feeling in Hiccup's stomach.

After looking into around eleven blocks, two things became apparent. The first: that he had never seen any movie that had this many scene changes, or so many _completely different_ scenes; between the menagerie of dancing animals and the myriad of disparate scenes, Hiccup had absolutely no idea what kind of movie he was in. He wondered if perhaps this was just a scrapyard for dozens of other movies that were all abandoned, because he couldn't fathom that all of these different places _actually_ occurred in a single movie.

The second: that he had even less of an idea where Jack was than he had thought. The thought began to creep in that maybe Jack had abandoned him. It seemed completely foolish; it didn't fit Jack's character at all (or, rather, what Hiccup had learned of Jack's character by who he was). But the doubt and the worry and the hurt began to sink into him all the same, as well as more than a hint of desperation as he realised he was completely stranded in a totally foreign location far beyond the edges of anything he'd ever been to. This is what Astrid had warned him about.

"Bud?" Hiccup began to cry out louder, the desperation seeping into his voice as he walked briskly up and down the blocks, entirely disoriented and unsure where he was. "Please!" His shoulders tensed up in worry. "BUD!"

"Yeah?"

Hiccup spun around. Jack's head was poking out from the side of a block, one of the blocks that Hiccup had stumbled past in his frantic search. He had a quizzical look on his face, as though he was contemplating why there would be any worry in Hiccup. His head was cocked to the side, horizontal with the floor, his once-again white hair falling down from his pale face.

"Where have you been all this time?!"

"I'm here?" he replied matter-of-factly. Hiccup wasn't sure what the influx of sudden emotions meant: if he should be relieved that he found Jack, or if he should personally delete the boy's data. He quickly decided against the latter as he looked again at Jack. "Come on, let's go!" he said, beckoning Hiccup before his head disappeared back inside the grey block. With trepidation but resolve all the same, Hiccup followed him.

This scene was... barren. So barren. There were snow-covered lands in the second movie; about half of the movie was covered in snow. But _this_ was different. There was nothing here but snow. Snow on the ground, snow in the air, snow _as_ the wind. A completely white world, as far as all he could see, except for the blob of blue and tan that stood out. If it hadn't been for that, Hiccup might have almost missed Jack entirely.

And there were other, much smaller blobs. Entirely black blobs. They almost... resembled dragons. The shape of their body was streamlined, rather aerodynamic — roughly the same overall shape of Toothless' head, in fact, though much curvier. They had wings, but they looked tiny to Hiccup from this distance, and even with the bit of flesh they had on them, Hiccup couldn't imagine that they'd be able to provide too much lift. Which seemed entirely at odds with their survival, considering about a quarter of their movements were waddles on what looked to be stump legs. These were the kinds of dragons that Valka's character would protect — ones that simply could not possibly survive outside a sanctuary. Then one of the four black blobs turned around, and Hiccup had no idea what he was staring at.

Two additional notes registered in Hiccup's mind in an instant: these dragons had entirely white underbellies; and, they had the dumbest looking eyes he had ever seen. Not in terms of corny, or crudely designed. No, this particular dragon looked as though it wasn't capable of thought on its own. Valka's sanctuary probably wasn't a good spot for this dragon. The thought "mercy kill" ran through Hiccup's mind quickly before he waved it away with both hands, earning a confused look from the weird tiny dragon.

Jack looked up from the other three dragons, who seemed to all be clamouring around him where he sat crouched on his feet.

"You really had me worried there," Hiccup called out over the snowy tundra as he approached the small, isolated group.

"Aww, you do care," Jack replied, and Hiccup could feel a blush coming over his cheeks and ears. The attention of all four tiny black blobs were now turned on Hiccup, and the boy wasn't sure what he was expected to do in this situation. Awkwardly, he gave a brief introduction of his name and what he hoped was only as little a shuffle as possible.

These dragons had faces that worked more like a human's than a dragon's. The shifty-eyed one who had been in front of Jack stepped (waddled) forward towards Hiccup. He pointed with his wing behind him, towards the tallest of the four dragons. "Kowalski," he stated briefly, which made absolutely no sense to Hiccup whatsoever. He then pointed to the other dragon. "Rico." Hiccup realised then that these were supposed to be names, and not some foreign language (or dragon speak; he'd never _actually_ heard a dragon speak before). He then pointed at the small, weak dragon. "Cute and cuddly, Private."

Hiccup supposed he _was_ cute and cuddly, but those were obviously not what his first thoughts had been.

The small dragon — Private, apparently — pointed at the alpha dragon. "Skipper."

An awkward moment of silence elapsed between the five parties, with Jack standing off to the side, unaffected and entirely not a part of the situation. After nothing was said for a few seconds, the Skipper dragon nodded his head and turned back towards Jack, all four of them huddling in towards him.

Hiccup stood and watched as they contorted into various shapes, wings flying, backs bending, feet flipping. It was like watching an acrobatic performance. When Skipper stopped moving, Jack rested his chin on his hand, nodding in concentration before signing back to him that Hiccup was actually great. Hiccup realised then that the elaborate movements were the way that these tiny black creatures communicated without fingers to sign, and Hiccup wondered for the first time how many languages Jack was able to speak.

Hiccup walked up to the group, looking down at Jack and the tiny dragons, who in turn were all looking up towards him. It was an awkward stalemate broken finally by Private waddling forward and tugging on the hem of Hiccup's leggings.

Hiccup sat himself down on the ground diagonal from Jack, folding his legs in front of him. He was startled when Private immediately climbed up and over the front of his legs, depositing himself in Hiccup's open lap. "I did it!" he cried out enthusiastically, and a wave of something akin to pity washed over Hiccup.

"You, quadraped," Skipper announced, Hiccup looking up towards him. "Spreken si english?"

These dragons made absolutely no sense at all; Hiccup began wondering if it might be a blessing that none of the dragons on Berk spoke. He looked to Jack for support, and the boy just smiled and signed that he was just asking if Hiccup could sign. With a nod, Hiccup signed out that he could, to which Skipper nodded. The dragon turned to Jack then, pointing at him with his wing. "You! Higher mammal. GIVE ME RESULTS!" he said, gesturing from himself and the other dragons towards Hiccup. Jack seemed to understand this and he put his hand to his forehead in a salute.

As it turned out, it seemed that these dragons were in the business of clandestine construction. Elaborate traps. Defensible stations. Secret, hidden forts. Jack wasn't able to translate all of the dragons' wild motions, but he did his best, and when he wasn't, Hiccup found himself staring at the other boy, entirely unperturbed that he was more fascinated by the beautiful man in front of him rather than the tiny, eccentric man-dragons.

There was a long list of supplies that Jack was supposed to retrieve. A number of these, Jack didn't bother translating as they had no bearing on Hiccup, but Hiccup was curious all the same and left wishing he'd had just a little more of a chance to peer into the other boy's life. Jack nodded diligently, saluting Skipper once more, before standing up.

Hiccup looked up at him, startled at the unexpected movement; there'd been no indication or warning message — translated or otherwise (he was doing his best to try and pick up what dragon movements _might_ be signs, but they seemed almost entirely incomprehensible). Jack smiled at him before signing to them that it was reaching morning and that Hiccup needed to return to his drive; it was further away still than Jack's, which the dragons seemed to acknowledge with a knowing nod. Suddenly, Hiccup wondered how frequent travel outside and between the drives happened, and why his drive wasn't visited by others.

Jack held out a hand towards Hiccup, helping him to his feet. Hiccup wasn't sure what he was supposed to do to say goodbye to some dragons who had, more or less, completely ignored him and only spoken with him offhandishly through a proxy (except for Private, who had remained in Hiccup's lap for half of the time before growing bored and sliding off onto the snowbanks). They _seemed_ nice, but Hiccup definitely wasn't a part of their circle. Yet. If Jack was a part of this, then Hiccup wanted to learn to be a part of this, too. And so Hiccup merely waved at the tiny dragons before looking up at Jack and nodding towards the direction they had entered.

"Oh wait a minute," Jack said as Hiccup began to move, and he turned around towards the sound of the voice.

Hiccup couldn't take it. It was so much more than cute. It was perfect. It was Jack, holding Private up near his own chin; his smile on his lips was small, but it contained happiness and joy and pride and warmth and contentment and welcoming and so many other emotions that were becoming wrapped up in the emotional web between Hiccup and Jack. Private was staring at Hiccup as well, waving his wing at him in goodbye, happy to be held and happy in general. Jack extended Private towards Hiccup, and even without the ability to sign it was clear to Hiccup from both of their eyes that they thought Private deserved a goodbye hug.

Hiccup moved forward, towards them, pulling Private against his chest and wrapping his arms around Jack as well, squishing the tiny dragon in as best a hug as he could.

And maybe it wasn't fair to the dragon, but Hiccup wanted him not to be there at that moment; to be able to feel and remember this moment of hugging only Jack and being held in return. And so he closed his eyes and did his best to remember every detail of the embrace, in whatever form it came in.

* * *

Hiccup was early. Very early.

It was Friday, and it was a holiday. The studio had closed early, the animators excitedly putting down their pens and closing their applications midway through the day, sometime very shortly after lunch. It was an inevitable decision; the animator working on tweaking Hiccup's skeleton had been doing so at an almost standstill pace. There was hardly a difference between when he had been here and when he no longer was.

Hiccup had dashed off, as he had done every day now for weeks. They knew that he was leaving; it would have been impossible to hide this from them for so long. Nobody had asked him about where he was going, but he never gave them a chance to.

He couldn't understand how they could just sit in there, every day. How _he_ had ever been able to. There was a whole vibrant, alive, crazy and insane and diverse and _beautiful_ world out there — dozens upon dozens of worlds — and so many characters in so many forms, and so many stories. Berk — his entire drive, even — had never felt smaller. The worlds that he explored with Jack never seemed to end; there was always a new place that the boy would bring him to next, pulling him along the Network Core by the hand and twisting like acrobats together, laughing and giggling the whole way.

And then there was Jack himself. Everything about him was beautiful. Of every movie Hiccup met, out of every block and directory and file he had stumbled through, he had never found anybody who looked better in his eyes than the white haired (sometimes brown) boy. When he laughed, Hiccup couldn't help but laugh. The smile he wore, the happiness in his eyes — they were lights that Hiccup couldn't grab enough of. And they were lights that were brighter every day. And Hiccup would think back to when he first met the strange boy, and he realised one day that those lights that were glowing brighter had been dim at the start. And from then on, every thought in his free time was about Jack, about his happiness, and about the fact that perhaps he had been the one to bring that shine on the icy-blue eyes.

Hiccup hadn't really thought about the logistics of the situation until he had entered through into Jack's drive. There was no way that Jack would be expecting him. A dead movie like this didn't receive any attention; Jack wouldn't be aware that today was any different than the day before it. There would be no Jack waiting for him at the entrance, nor along any of the paths that they would walk together on the nights when they stayed still and just talked, mostly about the adventures that Jack had seen or been a part of.

But there was no Jack here now. Which brought Hiccup to the present.

This was so wrong. He knew it was wrong. Every fibre of his being knew it was wrong, in a thousand different ways. He shouldn't be doing this, and if Jack found him—

Hiccup lied to himself, that he was doing this to find Jack. Which he wanted, he really did.

This was so wrong, it was killing him. But so was not doing it.

He pulled his head out from another one of the blocks. There had been no Jack inside any of the directories, and that one hadn't contained anything interesting. It was mainly just bump maps and discarded single-pixel image files. Most of the blocks along this row were entirely empty or essentially empty. If he weren't racked with guilt, he would let out a long-suffering groan.

He wandered aimlessly through the drive, staying clear from the paths that he and Jack would walk. That was how Hiccup knew that he was doing this more to find out about the boy than to find the boy. Which only completed full-circle the self-loathing.

Hiccup skipped two columns of blocks, coming to a stop in the middle of the cross-section of column and row. He tilted his head back, eyes closed, spun in a random direction and began walking.

It was the third block on that row. It was the first glimpse that Hiccup had of Jack's movie.

Bright greens, thousands of different colours, each in bloom as though the world were made of nothing but flowers. Rivers were coursing through the edges, and large stones littered the sides of the terrain, terracing the land. Hiccup walked through it, the tall grass brushing at his ankles, mouth slightly ajar.

It was beautiful. Not in any way that Hiccup had seen from any other movie. There was detail to the land that was as unique as the detail to Jack, and the vibrancy of it all gave it a life even though it had long since been abandoned. If Hiccup wanted, he could stay here every moment for the rest of his life. This felt like any paradise he could have ever dreamed up. If he breathed, he would have stopped doing so in here.

When he came out on the other side, he felt different. Changed. He felt guilty, and now he would feel even more so when he had to look at the other boy's smiling face and know that he had violated the only privacy that he had requested. There was no justification for this. But he couldn't imagine why he would want to hide this. Of every drive, every scene, every location Hiccup had visited, this was his favourite, and he had only been through one scene.

Hiccup pushed through another block.

It was a mountain of snow, every snowflake freshly fallen, moving so that if a breeze came through it would pick up and flurries would take to the air. That level of detail didn't exist even in his new movie. He bent down to pick up a single snowflake, looking at it and the sheer level of minute detail that had been put into something that nobody but he would be able to see. He realised that every snowflake — _every_ snowflake in the entire scene — was unique after looking at the fourth one.

Perched atop ice that ran alongside the mountain in the distance was a massive house, the circular dome reaching higher than any building that existed on Berk. Along and under the ridge were smaller houses, and a wooden track like a runway rose and fell and ran around through the icy shelf beneath the citadel. Warm glow illuminated every window, and it felt just as alive as the previous scene though it was likely just as abandoned. Hiccup could only get so close, though; the inside of the building was another scene that he would find elsewhere.

The block after the mountain was just as moving. And the one after that. And after that. Every place that Hiccup visited, the detail and the warmth and just the sheer radiation of joy and contentment and happiness overwhelmed him and made him smile like a kid. His guilt wasn't forgotten, but he couldn't believe Jack had kept this from him.

And then he stumbled into the block. He had expected it to be yet another fantastical location. But it was plain, just a regular directory. With many files that bore different names but each said "Script."

Hiccup walked up to the largest file, slowly, knowing that even though he'd gone far beyond where he should have, if he touched this file now there would be no going back. No matter how this ended, there would be no going back. His mind and his heart both told him to turn away.

His hand touched the file and it opened around him, words flashing and filling the air, pages and pages flying around him quickly, his eyes moving and taking in everything.

It was the story of a boy who was lost, unseen, unloved. It was the story of Jack. Of a desperate hope to be loved even though he couldn't, and wouldn't, love himself. It was a story of those who didn't think themselves friends becoming so, and each of them helping the other when they were weakest. It was the story of Jack playing and protecting children; it was the story of Jack regaining his memories, of learning that he had a family, of dying in the process of saving his little sister. It was the story of Jack making the biggest mistakes but then picking himself up again instead of staying down. It was a story of Jack's redemption, of Jack's hope, of Jack's life.

It was the story of Jack as a hero.

With the end of the file, the pages fell back together, leaving Hiccup staring up into empty space, eyes still wide and flickering from having taken in too much information in too little a time. He took a step away from the file.

He had violated Jack's trust, Jack's privacy. But he had to tell him. Jack wasn't the bad guy; he never was, no matter what mistakes he had made. This wasn't something that Hiccup could judge him for. This would never have changed how Hiccup saw Jack. Because this was the Jack that he knew. This was the proof that Jack was everything that Hiccup had seen, that the world was being shown the same Jack that Hiccup got to spend every day with. That Jack was truly perfect.

Hiccup left the block, desperate more than ever now to find Jack. Telling him would be hard, but he had to. He wanted Jack to know what Hiccup thought of him. He wanted _Jack_ to be able to share everything. To be able to tell him the story as he had lived it and what it was like when this drive still had life. He wanted Jack to tell him about Bunnymund and Toothiana and Jamie and Phil. He wanted to know everything about the boy, to fill in all the new gaps that had been opened up by closing the largest one of all. And he wanted — needed — to hear it from the boy he was about to tell everything to.

He steered himself through the blocks, doing his best to orient himself despite having long ago lost any idea of where he was. It was hard to determine if he had made a wrong turn or if he was even going in the right direction, because he had never had points of references to base his knowledge off of. He'd never wondered through the drive unguided, nor had he ever had the chance to be able to guide himself. He'd never be able to find Jack in all of this, and there was only about a 60% chance he'd be able to find his way to the front of the drive.

"Hey!" he called out, cupping his hands around his mouth. Not for the first time since he had met Jack, he was annoyed at how limited his voice was. But this would be enough. Jack would hear him, and would find him.

Hiccup began moving, first walking and then jogging down the row he was in. He _hoped_ that he was going in the right direction (wherever that actually was), but it was more likely that he wasn't. At least, he figured, by not staying in the same spot and yelling in the same local vicinity, there was a greater chance Jack would be able to hear him; he'd be incredibly easy to track if Jack heard him, he figured, so there wasn't any real downside to doing this while he ran.

Really, though, he just didn't want to be standing in the same spot. There were too many emotions and too many things he was bursting to say and do that standing still and waiting for rescue wouldn't have been possible.

"Hey! Hey!"

In the far distance, at the last moment while he was passing through the crossroads between row and column, Hiccup thought he heard something. Something faint, but _something_ , from down _that_ way. He turned his head, trying to turn his body toward the sound. And he promptly twisted his legs together, lower body not having realised what the upper body was trying to do, and immediately he was falling towards the floor. Instinct from hundreds of hours of being animated through all sorts of hurdles and recoveries caught up to him, and Hiccup turned the back of his shoulder toward the floor, curving it right in time before the impact. He saved himself the brunt of the damage, but the momentum and the curve he'd created sent him rolling. It was two full barrel rolls before he had managed to stick an arm out and catch the ground (in a jarring and painful move on his part).

But this was not the crossroads anymore. This was neither row nor column. Hiccup pulled himself up to his feet, looking around the block that he had rolled into. The walls and the ceiling and the floor were black; he was standing inside a hidden directory. A hidden directory filled with dozen upon dozens of files, which all sprang to life at the boy's entrance.

Images. News headlines and news clippings. Company memos. Emails.

"'Rise of the Guardians' Failure Led to DreamWorks Animation "Reset", 350 Layoffs"

"'Rise of the Guardians' May Be a Disaster For DreamWorks Animation"

"DreamWorks Animation Takes $87 Million Charge for 'Rise of the Guardians,' Confirms Layoff Plans"

"This letter confirms our discussion today that you are being laid off from your employment with DreamWorks Animation effective immediately."

"'Rise of the Guardians' is the worst animated movie to ever wear the DreamWorks logo"

Every clipping was followed by another one, in rapid succession, each as horrible or worse than the last. Images flashing past of economic charts from the sales team, or of press releases. Hundreds upon hundreds of internal emails between HR, leading all the way to the top.

And it didn't stop. They just kept coming. Hundreds of files were flying before Hiccup's eyes, leaving his head rushing and eyes reeling. Six thousand files and two gigabytes in the span of milliseconds, and then it was dark. Everything was black, the now-faint grey glow of the closed files softening the sheer darkness.

There was a dull thud behind him, and Hiccup spun.

Jack stood there, not moving. Simply staring at Hiccup with a look of abject horror written across his face; eyes wide, mouth open. The sound had been his staff falling to the floor, left there unretrieved. Hiccup raised his hand towards the boy.

And then he was alone.

Hiccup rushed forward, scooping up the staff awkwardly as he rushed through the divide and out into the drive. Jack was far away by this point, two rows over, but his running was erratic; it looked like he was scrambling at the ground or for purchase as he ran, and it slowed him down. Not enough for Hiccup to catch up to him, though; still barely enough for him to be able to follow him. But, still enough. He was grateful that it seemed Jack was floorbound; Hiccup would have to ask if Jack could only fly when he had his staff. _If_ he could ever ask him. Because Hiccup knew that if he lost this race, he would never see Jack again.

It was a mad hunt, Jack turning corners at random, almost disappearing from view entirely by the time that Hiccup would reach it. Blocks and blocks flew by in a blur as Hiccup made a desperate dash, trying to follow the pale boy. Hiccup was calling out to Jack, at first coherent sayings but then turning into anything that Hiccup could find available. Jack never looked back once.

Jack turned the corner two rows in front of Hiccup, to the right. Hiccup put in a burst of speed, leaping into the cross while turning at the same time to continue the pursuit.

But Jack was nowhere.

It was impossible. No. He couldn't lose Jack. He couldn't never see Jack again. He couldn't go back to his movie and spend every day there, content in his own protected little bubble, surrounded by all his friends, and forget that all of this ever happened. He couldn't let the last image that he would ever see of the boy he loved be one of sheer horror. He couldn't lose Jack.

He also _couldn't_ lose Jack. He hadn't been running quickly enough to have been able to make it out of sight or sound range. Hiccup scanned the tops of the blocks as best he could, in hope defiant of logic, but he wasn't there. Jack couldn't be anywhere on the grid anymore.

Jack had to have disappeared into one of the blocks around here. One of the ones just up this column. He couldn't have gotten far — it would have to be one of the four blocks lining this and the next row. He had disappeared into it, thinking he'd lose Hiccup. Hiccup shuddered and barred from his mind the only other alternative — deleting his own data.

Despite every urge to act, Hiccup stood still. He waited for almost thirty full seconds, listening and watching to see if Jack would emerge from the block, having thought he lost his tail. Content that whichever block he had disappeared into seemed to be the place that Jack was staying, Hiccup steeled himself and moved towards the first one. It was filled with storyboards of Pitch's confrontation at Toothiana's palace, and absent of Jack. He pulled his head out and moved to the next one, which had only a few temporary cache files left over from an open Word document that was no longer there.

It was a forest. A dead forest, no leaves on the trees, snow instead clinging along the limbs. The white blanket of snow that covered the whole area — disturbed only by logs and twigs that stuck out of the ground at odd angles — shone brightly in the light of the bright, full moon, one that bathed the scene in a vibrant glow. It didn't take Hiccup having seen the movie to recognise the scene he was in, and it didn't take the footprints in the snow to know that Jack was here. Softly, Hiccup fully entered the third block, the snow shifting under his foot and prosthetic with ease. He followed the trail, slowly; he wasn't consciously aware of how closely he was following it, that his footsteps were matching the prints of the other boy. The path through the forest was winding and unkempt; logs blocked his way, forcing him to duck and pull himself over. But he didn't care. The only thing that mattered was that Jack was at the end of these footprints.

The path didn't widen at the end; Hiccup simply stepped over a log, and then he was staring across the huge lake, frozen solid except for the burst in the middle, large chunks of ice broken away and laying discarded alongside the hole. The moonlight above it clung to the ice, dazzling on the frost that was coating the surface in patches.

Hiccup looked down at his feet. The trail had long ago lost the frantic pace of a madman, slowly turning into a shuffle, rocking back and forth with erratic footfalls. Now, the trail turned right, walking along the edge of the forest. Hiccup followed it, relieved — that Jack was here — and nervous — that he didn't know what to say.

Hiccup walked nearly a fourth of the perimeter of the lake before he saw Jack. He was sitting under the shade of a large tree, the boy tucked into himself, arms wrapped around his legs and forehead resting against his knees, his hood pulled over his hair. Hiccup approached him slowly, expecting him to suddenly get up and run away. But Jack just continued sitting where he was, head down, unmoving.

When Hiccup was standing only a few steps away from Jack, he stopped. He wasn't sure what to do. There was nothing in his voice that could begin to help him, and he couldn't sign to Jack even if he knew the words that he wanted to say. So after a pause, he did the only thing he could think to do.

Setting the staff down in the snow next to him, Hiccup moved over to Jack's side, seating himself to the boy's left. Jack didn't look towards him — he hadn't moved at all since Hiccup had first arrived — and Hiccup just stared out over the surface of the lake, wondering how anybody could look at this and not be awed.

A minute passed with the two of them sitting, side by side, no words and no eye contact. Then Hiccup wrapped his right arm across Jack's back, holding the other boy's shoulder — not hard, but firm, reassuring. He let the moment pass, and then he gently pulled Jack towards him, until the boy's body was leaning against his.

Jack didn't fight it. He allowed himself to be pulled flush against Hiccup, his head rolling slightly to fall against the side of Hiccup's arm after a moment, forehead still against his knees. He neither looked up nor said anything, and the two sat in silence for longer still. But Hiccup could only take it for so long. He had to tell Jack; he had to say something, and Jack wasn't going to.

"Please, you're my best friend. I don't want to fight. Just let me show you. Please."

Slowly, carefully, Jack lifted his head, at first still turned away from Hiccup, only at length facing him, but looking at Hiccup's lap rather than Hiccup's face. Hiccup could see the tears building up in his eyes, the look of defeat written on his face and the lines of his body. Hiccup moved to wipe at the boy's eyes, but Jack turned his head away.

"Why?" Hiccup asked quietly.

It took a moment, the white-haired boy obviously deciding whether he wanted to respond. In the end, he pulled his body away slightly, turning it to face Hiccup though his eyes would still not look Hiccup in the face.

Because he hadn't wanted Hiccup to find out, he signed.

Hiccup took Jack's chin in his face, careful but firm, and turned it towards him; waited until Jack couldn't look away any longer. Why would Jack have hidden this from Hiccup, he asked. Jack began replying so quickly, Hiccup could barely make out the signs, and what he could made no sense. As much as he didn't want to, he had to ask Jack to repeat it.

This time, it was slower. Jack hadn't wanted Hiccup to find out, because Jack was ashamed. Hiccup was about to prompt Jack to explain when the boy did on his own.

Hiccup's movie was a huge success. Everybody had loved it, every kid who had seen it was swept away by it. Jack had watched it, and he fell in love with it, with all the characters, with Hiccup and Toothless and the magic of it. And the money it had brought in for DreamWorks had expanded the studio, had built it strong, carried with it the windfall of success and happy smiles and victories. And Hiccup's new movie wasn't even out yet — wouldn't be out for years, even — but there was already anticipation, there were already fans screaming eagerly and reporters asking whether this would be an even greater success. And it _would_ be.

But Jack's movie had failed. He had failed. There were hundreds of articles buried in that directory saying that his own movie was the largest flop, the greatest mistake that DreamWorks had ever made. And it was true. DreamWorks was suffering and would continue to suffer. Hundreds of people had lost their jobs because of him, and because of _him_ the studio was in so much trouble that only the success of Hiccup's new movie would be able to save it from closing. It was his fault that everybody here, every movie and every character, faced the very real possibility of being shut down forever. And he hadn't wanted Hiccup to find out, because if he had known how much of a disgrace Jack and his movie was, it would kill him. To have Hiccup's eyes on him and know that he had caused all of this.

Hiccup didn't know what to say. He sat there, stunned by the raw truth Jack had just lain bare, speechless both in voice and in hands. His mind was blank, unable to think of anything to say or even any form of response at all. After a moment, Jack looked away, jaw set, pulling back his body slightly.

Hiccup surged forward, wrapping his arms around Jack's body, pinning his arms together in a hug, resting his head on Jack's shoulder. The angle and distance of their bodies made the embrace difficult and awkward, but Hiccup refused to let go, refused to move. And it took a few moments, but slowly Jack lowered his head to Hiccup's shoulder. Hiccup could feel all too well the crying that was shaking the boy's body, and his hands began to rub at Jack's back soothingly of their own accord. There were so many things Hiccup wanted to do, but he chose to remain there, letting the boy cry on his shoulder. When at last the sobbing had begun to die down, Hiccup pulled back, not letting Jack go but forcing their heads apart so Jack could look at him.

"Look," he said, taking his left arm from Jack's back and sweeping it out over the frozen lake. Jack's eyes followed Hiccup's hand over the scene, before coming back to rest on Hiccup's face. There was so much beauty in Jack's lands, Hiccup told him. So much beauty in Jack. Hiccup had read Jack's movie, had seen the story that Jack had had to be put through. Jack's story had every bit as much magic in it and hope and love and happiness that his own did. And no amount of success or failure, no amount of negative headlines or company emails, would be able to take that away from him. Jack was not alone in this, and it wasn't his fault. It was nobody's fault. But it certainly wasn't Jack's. Because Hiccup hadn't even seen Jack's movie and he already knew how amazing and powerful and moving it would be. How amazing Jack would be. Because he hadn't even seen Jack's movie and he already loved the boy and everything he did.

Jack's mouth was parted, and it looked as though the tears were threatening to come back. Hiccup raised a finger to Jack's eye, wiping away the wetness that was beginning to form. And slowly, he cupped Jack's cheek with his hand, staring into the ice blue eyes that were so unlike anything that he had ever seen.

"You never cease to amaze me," he said.

Jack's eyes fell, but bashfully this time. And the corners of his lips twitched, a tiny smile creeping over the thin line of his mouth. He peered up, looking at Hiccup for a moment before falling again, and he began to pull back, creating space between them, Hiccup's right hand only barely on Jack's back anymore.

"What, is it always going to be this way?" Hiccup asked.

And then Jack closed the gap, arms coming up to grab Hiccup's face, and Hiccup could feel the other boy's lips against his own, soft and gentle and everything he had imagined them to be. And it was tentative and scared and with more than a little shaking. But then Hiccup placed his free hand on the back of the boy's head, using the hand on Jack's back to pull the boy closer to him. Only at length did they pull apart, and when they did, Jack was blushing but smiling, his head turned to the side and his eyes looking at him with the tiny shreds of hope being stitched together.

"Cause I could get used to this."

Jack smiled wide, all teeth and happiness and joy and relief, and Hiccup decided it was beautiful.


End file.
